EMV adoption reaches one billion cards and 15m terminals

EMVCo, the payments chip card standards body owned by MasterCard, Visa, American Express and JCB, has revealed that there are now more than one billion EMV cards and 15.4 million EMV terminals in use around the world.

EMV ADOPTION: More than one billion cards in circulation worldwide (Click to enlarge)

Overall, 36% of cards and 65% of terminals in circulation globally are now based on the EMV standard, the organisation reports.

On a regional basis, Europe Zone 1 (see table below) has the highest adoption of EMV technology with 555.7m cards and 9.4m terminals, representing an adoption rate of 65.4% of cards and 84.7% of terminals.

In the Asia-Pacific region, 305.1m cards and 3.2m terminals are in operation, while the Canada, Latin American and the Caribbean region has 182.2m cards and two million terminals in circulation. These two regions share a similar rate of adoption, says EMVCo, with 26.6% and 26.4% of total cards, and 41.6% and 55.6% of total terminals EMV compliant respectively.

REGIONS: EMVCo splits the world into five regions — and the notably absent USA. (Click to enlarge)

In Europe Zone 2, 22.8m cards and 458,000 terminals are active, an adoption rate of 11.5% of cards and 61.2% of terminals, while 16.8m cards and 348,000 terminals are deployed in Africa and the Middle East, representing an adoption rate of 13.7% of cards and 62.5% of terminals.

The United States of America is excluded from the figures as there are currently no EMV programmes deployed in the territory.

“Breaking down the one billion deployment figure by region enables us to clearly see the significant growth of EMV card and terminal adoption and the continued acceptance of EMV as the global payment standard worldwide,” says Jim Lee, chair of the EMVCo executive committee.

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